Feeling Patriotic In Our Nation's Capital

This past weekend we took a few extra days and made a short road trip to Montreal and Ottawa. We drove part of the way to Ottawa on Thursday night and arrived Friday shortly before noon. We wandered the pedestrian mall on Sparks Street and settled on Nate's Deli for lunch.

I had an amazing vegetarian club sandwich with avocados and sprouts and Dave had smoked meat on bread. We both enjoyed our respective, vastly different, meals.

Then we joined a tour of our parliament buildings. For those of you who aren't aware, Ottawa is Canada's national capital.

While we enjoyed seeing the House of Commons...

...and the Senate...

...my absolute favourite room (to no one's surprise) was the library. It was gorgeous and now I am scheming how to get a job there and break it to Dave that we are moving to Ottawa. Ha!

Our tour ended with a trip up the Peace Tower (the tall clock tower in the top picture). We had amazing views of the city and the clock. We were right there when the bells tolled 3pm and it was so beautiful.

 

Looking out into Gatineau, QC.

Looking up at the clock. We could actually see the minute hand moving which was really neat.

 

Terry Fox was almost 22 when having lost most of his right leg to cancer, he decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. His goal was to raise one dollar for every Canadian (at the time there were 24 million people living in Canada.) He basically ran a marathon every day and started his "Marathon of Hope" on April 12, 1980 in Newfoundland. Unfortunately, on September 1, just outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario, he had to stop because his cancer had returned, this time in his lungs. He had run 5,373 kilometres (3,339 mi).

Sadly, Terry died in February of 1981. However, every year Terry Fox runs have been held across Canada and, to date, they have raised over $650 million. Terry Fox is one of Canada's national heroes and every school kid grows up learning about him. The kids were pleased to find this statue of him across from the Parliament Buildings. (To learn more about Terry Fox and the foundation set up in his name, go here.)

Another statue on Parliament Hill is the "Women are persons..." statue celebrating the acknowledgement that women could be appointed to the senate.

In 1928 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not "persons" and, therefore, couldn't be appointed to the Senate. A group of five Canadian women, Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise Crummy McKinney, and Irene Parlby (who have become known as The Famous Five), fought the ruling. In 1929 the Judicial Council of Britain's Privy Council overruled the Supreme Court ruling and declared that "Women are Persons."

Thanks to the work of The Famous Five, and many other unnamed women, 

my daughter and I will never know the kinds of discrimination these women did 

solely due to the fact we are female. 

This does not negate the other forms of discrimination against women,

both in our country and around the world.

 

The Famous Five also fought for other women's rights and Edmonton, where we used to live, actually has a park dedicated to each of the Famous Five, as they originated in Alberta. To read more about the Famous Five, and the Persons case, go here.

After we looked at some of the statues on Parliament Hill, we went to see the locks of the Rideau Canal. They were very impressive.

We had supper, and stayed overnight, with my cousins, Kristina and Rob. They took us to the Lone Star Texas Grill and I had the best fish tacos ever. I also overdosed on salsa and chips and a margarita. I am now way more envious of my blog friends who live in Texas and get to eat like this all the time. If I can't convince Dave to move to Ottawa so I can work at the Parliamentary Library, I may work on convincing him to move to Texas, solely for the food!

After supper, Rachel led us through one of her dance class exercises. Let's just say she is way more flexible than the rest of us put together. Ha!

And that was the end of our short stay in Ottawa. On Saturday, however, we were off to further adventures...

Read about Day 2 here.